A team of scientists, including Carnegie’s Alan Boss, has
discovered two Earth-like planets in the habitable orbit of a Sun-like star.
Their work is published in Science Express.
Using observations gathered by NASA’s Kepler Mission, the
team, led by William Borucki of the NASA Ames Research Center, found five
planets orbiting a Sun-like star called Kepler-62. Four of these planets are
so-called super-Earths, larger than our own planet, but smaller than even the
smallest ice giant planet in our Solar System. These new super-Earths have
radii of 1.3, 1.4, 1.6, and 1.9 times that of Earth. In addition, one of the
five was a roughly Mars-sized planet, half the size of Earth.
Kepler-62 is one of about 170,000 stars observed by the
Kepler Space Telescope, with a mass about 69% of that of our Sun. The Kepler
Space Telescope reveals for planets orbiting a star by detecting a small,
temporary dimming of the star as a planet passes between it and the telescope.